4 ms·
I'm frankly not sure it will ever be possible. Forget about observing the inside of a running neuron. In spite of how confidently people on the Internet will te
by nonameiguess 2y ago
I'm frankly not sure it will ever be possible. Forget about observing the inside of a running neuron. In spite of how confidently people on the Internet will tell you their body fat percentage, in reality we can't even accurately measure that without killing you first.
- aithrowawaycomm 2y agoI wouldn't say never, at least for C. elegans: there's been quite a bit of progress on imaging its brain, and it's plausible we'll have a fairly complete picture in a few decades: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7801769/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7801769/ But the challenges are substantial, and these imaging techniques (mostly optical, not MRI/etc) depend on the simplicity of C. elegans: its brain is essentially a thin disk, with only 300 neurons in its entire nervous system, and it is surrounded by a transparent membrane. I am not sure how these techniques could possibly extend to something with a thick exoskeleton like Drosophila. And there are great difficulties keeping track of just the 300 neurons in a moving nematode with its own unique brain; it seems completely intractable with current tools to extend the complexity 50x, especially since fruit flies move far more rapidly and have far more individual variation.